


Can't Fix Everything that Way

by helena_s_renn



Category: Def Leppard, Music RPF
Genre: Gallows Humor, Grief/Mourning, Implied Phil/Steve, Mentions of het, Multi, Other, minor violence and medical ick, referenced [fictional] Sav/Joe, references to events surrounding Steve Clark's death, unwanted propositions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-05 22:30:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14628360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helena_s_renn/pseuds/helena_s_renn
Summary: The pressure on Phil during the recording of Adrenalize explodes again. His bandmates think they know how to calm him down. They're wrong.





	Can't Fix Everything that Way

**Author's Note:**

> The following fictional retelling is based loosely on certain RL events... Someone read Phil's bio recently. This is rehash, literary regurgitation, and this subject has been written better by better authors. Still, it's part of the story and the process, and another case of a character's muse refusing to shut up. I hope you get something out of my version.
> 
> In no way is any disrespect intended to actual members, past or present, of Def Leppard.
> 
> Beta by ChristianHowe. Any remaining errors are mine.

-1991, April

 

Recording continued. They weren't meant to operate as a four-piece.

There should have been four guitarists to cover all the parts. They couldn't do it with one alone. But they had to.

They discussed throwing in the towel, like Zepp after Bonham. Discussed it daily, always dragging each other back from the edge.

Impossible, not only because of contractual obligations. Suffering will release a person's creativity or shut them down; none of them, shell-shocked and full of guilt and rage and despair as they were when not numb or otherwise insensate, had lost that spark. 

 

It affected Phil worse than the rest of them put together. They'd all lost a mate, a brother; he'd lost his twin. His and Steve's styles were complimentary, but dissimilar. Now Phil had the responsibility of replicating expressive tones and timing he could barely stand to listen to on a good day, demo tracks and earlier preliminary work, and giving voice with his hands and strings to what was gone forever except in already-fading internalised tablature and the special sense memory only he carried. Broken guitars were left in his wake, thank god not the Destroyer, which he'd left in trust with his Mum, nor the Gibsons he'd _not_ inherited, the ultimate slap in the face - those were locked away in a climate-controlled vault somewhere, unlikely to resurface for decades for all they knew.

Working it out in the studio left everyone tense and snappish. Sav and Joe traded looks with increasing concern over Phil's outbursts. It wasn't like him, except in the last few weeks he'd done it a dozen times. Rick couldn't take the palpable stress without freaking out himself, and was unsurprisingly absent.

Getting Phil lit was not an option. No matter how bad it got, he refused to go back to his old ways. He'd be fine for days, till some riff tripped him up, or an interval was wrong, then his mood would swing. There'd be yelling and more splintered wood and he'd come at them with bared teeth, fists swinging, kicking with his booted feet. Phil always went for the jugular: today Sav got a black eye and a split lip; Joe got throat-punched and it was a near miss to being kneed in the balls.

In the end, they had to pin Phil down, the two of them larger, grown up on the usual Northern back yard brawling. It still took twenty minutes for the fight to go out of him. Then came his muffled, petulant voice: "Sav, get off my arse, you're givin' me a stiffy."

Joe threw his head back and laughed.

"Shut up, Joe. We all know you like 'aving him on your arse."

"Yeah, and who likes to watch?" Sav retorted. None of them had forgotten the shower incident. It still came up occasionally.

"Watching's good. Maybe then we coulda..." Phil cut himself off short, choking out, "No... No! Get the fuck off me."

Joe looked at Sav, who returned the look. Joe flipped his eyebrows. Sav shrugged, and mouthed, _"Just this once."_

"Would you like us to take care of you?" Joe enquired. His voice slid out like honeyed gravel. "You'll feel better for it." Slowly, they released their hold on the guitarist's arms; Sav hauled himself off Phil's lower back and stood aside. Joe offered Phil a hand up but Phil hadn't been lying and he wouldn't budge.

"Don't be daft, we're all blokes here," Joe scolded him. "We won't look."

"Exactly."

"What?"

Phil took a deep breath and blew it out, raising his head to rest his chin on one hand. He bent his legs at the knees and crossed his ankles. All he needed was a pair of bib overalls, a straw hat and a long stalk of grain dangling from his teeth to be the perfect hayseed. "I... I suppose I'm happy for you, whatever you two've got going. But I'm actually not... can't say everything is sunshine and rainbows, you know." Even Phil looked confused over the contradiction. "I can't expect to be okay right now. Thanks, I get what you're trying to do. It's been done. It changes nothing."

Here, the other two men glanced at each other again for the briefest instant. They'd suspected as much. Joe gave another laugh, this time tight and dark. "C'mon mate, this is us! Let us help you..."

"What? You think if one of you blows me and the other sticks it up my arse I'll be fine? A cheap, dirty one-off isn't what I need. No offence."

Joe looked a bit taken aback but wheedled, "Sounds to me as if you know exactly what you want."

In the meantime, Sav shot Phil a look of wide-eyed bewilderment and turned his back, his hands shaking. "Joe, that's enough. He said no," came his voice, half-muffled. 

"But..." 

"Step off!" Sav shot back. 

Phil spoke for himself. "You can't fix everything with sex, Joe. You just can't. I won't... never again. Gave that up, just like drinking, or eating meat, or putting anything unhealthy in my body."

"Are you saying we're... unhealthy?" asked Joe, an edge of disbelief in his tone. 

Phil slowly sat up on his knees, brushing dust from his jeans. "Take a look at yourself. You are for me... like that... yeah. Sorry."

"So what... you're going to be a monk now? Take a vow of celibacy?"

Finally Phil laughed, a bit hollow but he managed, "Have you met me?" Tension broken, he let Joe pull him to his feet.

"Aye... so just the fairer sex for you then?" asked the frontman.

"You're really fixated on what I do with my knob, you know that?"

"We've been worried," Joe corrected him. "Can you... talk to Rick, maybe? Let him know you'll quit trashing chairs and guitars and stuff? It really bugs him out."

"He's got his own shite to deal with... okay, fine," Phil added, knowing he'd never hear the end of it till he agreed. If and when, that was his to decide.

"Alright then," Joe slapped his hands together as if all were settled. It wasn't, no more than any other day. Phil hunkered down again to pick up pieces of wood, metal and electronics, shaking his head.

Across the room, Sav finally turned back around. He wouldn't bring up Phil's - and his - loss directly. Till now, he'd been unable to feel anyone's pain but his own; Phil's hit him hard. Going to one knee, he helped Phil with clean-up, winding sproinging strings around a busted neck and carefully picking up scattered splinters with the pads of his fingers. "Write a song... for him," he murmured, head down, for Phil's hearing only.

"I did. I have. It's not finished yet, though; it needs something."

"Show me... I mean, if you want. If you can." Flicking his hair back, Sav looked Phil full in the face, maybe for the first time in months. The icy-blue eyes that met his were the calm before the storm. Like hell they'd seen the end of it.

Phil seemed to think it over, internally checking off a list of pros and cons. "How about tomorrow?"

"That's fine. Does it have a name yet?"

"Yes." Decisive choice, decisive answer. "White Lightning." A split second after he said it, Phil would have sworn that something pale and incandescent flashed across the dim room. He couldn't quite see it, just a bright spot in the corner of his eye. 

"Right, of course," Sav nodded and sucked in a breath. He glanced away again, in the direction of the glint.

Another voice burst their temporary little bubble of understanding. "Why don't you just call it Steve Clark?"

"Because," Phil answered heatedly, his hands tightening into fists. Sav laid a hand on his arm, which he shook off. "If we're to sum up... everything in one song, it should be about who he really was, not what he was saddled with at birth. The words I wrote so far are what happened in the end. The rest, my parts... mine and his... they're going on different tracks, right side, left side, alternating one then the other, one over and one under, just like we've always done it. I'll get it down if it kills me." He bounced up again, in Joe's face, never mind more than half a head height difference, poking a finger in Joe's sternum. "And you're gonna sing it. We're all gonna sing it."

"What if we all start bawling on stage?" Joe sniffed. He'd already made the leap to performing the finished tribute live.

"Then we do. Or we'll get a new guy by then and let him sing it."

"Like hell we will...!"

"Tomorrow, Phil. Remember? Okay?" Sav reminded him. They all needed to calm down. Relax. Blow off some steam.

"Maybe day after tomorrow," Phil amended, stepping back. There was a sardonic twist to his lips. "I could use a day off from you fuckers." Without a goodbye, he walked out.

 

When he regained awareness of anything besides the tornado of images and music in his head, anything present, Phil found himself in his room, going over and over what he'd written. Everything. The time that Steve, with Joe, had come to watch him perform with Girl. The adrenaline high Phil had been riding when he'd unknowingly auditioned, being in the same studio with the bloke. The two of them lip-syncing into the same mic as they shot the Pyromania videos, making light of themselves but even then it was only a matter of time. Hours, days, their whole lives it had seemed at the time, listening to music and each other. Playing, Steve's riffs chunky with occasional scimitar-like cuts to the heart; Phil's own strings and shreds of musical commentary, the two of them woven together. Getting high in Amsterdam. Skinny-dipping in Ibiza. The walks and sitting in little outdoor cafés smoking French cigarettes along the Seine. The women they'd shared, gateway drug of sorts to their discovery that no such buffer was needed, passions that burned hot and bright as a meteor shower for an elongated, elaborated instant in time. And then... drifting. Touring. Life. The kiss Halfin had immortalised, which was total overkill because by then they'd done everything they'd ever do and it was starting to slide downhill into the river of denial.

Phil hated to think about how he'd become so distracted, but who'd have known? Weren't they supposed to go off and do their own things after they got filthy rich? He'd never intended to rest on his laurels. Now there were no laurels, only a bed of thorns and needles. He was haunted by the thought of Steve, cold, blue, unmoving, alone, laid out on a steel table, strangers' uncaring fingers touching his golden hair, cutting into him, turning his skin inside-out... 

People talk about being laid to rest. Phil got laid to feel alive. Not the same, yet somehow intertwined. He could bitch at Joe all he wanted, but he could only wish that he could be with anyone right now, anyone at all. No, not anyone. He was gone. If Phil repeated it to himself enough times, it might sink in. Then why was Steve here with him, sitting right beside him? If he waited long enough, he'd lay back and let Phil have him, those eyes of infinite sadness frying every desire to venture out into the world, the studio, life, love, again.

How was he supposed to play all that? Should he? It wouldn't fix anything. 

Or it was the only thing that would. 

 

Fin.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback... keeps writers writing.


End file.
